There isn't any explanation as to why you play as a lone ship fighting your way through numerous enemies on various planets, but who needs a story in a shoot-em-up anyway? Shoot-em-ups are all about challenging, and often frantic, gameplay. There's no time to worry about the details. When it comes to challenge, Protöthea delivers, but it doesn't deliver exceptionally. It just delivers. This isn't to say that the gameplay doesn't have its strong points though. Protöthea has an interesting control scheme. Rotate the ship and aim with the wii remote, and move the ship with the control stick. It's basically FPS controls applied to a shooter, ala Geometry Wars. It works just as well as the PC version, and after some practice, you may come to appreciate the control scheme for moving and firing. It's not good enough in this day and age to just point and shoot though. Besides firing your main weapon with the A button, you can drop bombs on ground enemies with the B button. The bombs have a fairly impressive firing distance (not explosion diameter), but aim carefully, because the farther out you aim the bombs, the shorter they'll fall from the target.
MyWii writes: "Protöthea is another top-down side-scrolling space shooter, but with a twist. Your ship has free form movement, which means you can shoot 360 degrees at all angles. It is a remake of the shooter of the same name released in 2005 for PC."
Gamez writes: "The first game saw the light of day in 2005, but as a PC game Protöthea did not have time to throw large eyes. Publisher Ubisoft is anno 2009 with the title in the resit, because this sci-fi shooter is now available via Nintendo's WiiWare channel."
At a whopping 1,000 points Protothea is simply too lazy and charmless to recommend. For only a few bucks more you can pick up Geometry Wars Galaxies, and that would be money very well spent indeed. Treacle-slow gameplay and, unless you love generic sci-fi future visions, very little incentive to soldier on. Less Star Wars, more star bores.
You'll love:
- Nice cloned controls
- Neat explosions
- Multiplayer free-for-alls
You'll hate:
- Slooooooooooow
- Yet still frustrates
- Ugly backgrounds
